It Snows
by delyrical
Summary: Nakamori Ginzo is dead.
1. Chapter 1

**I'm REALLY not sure about this one. I have no idea where it's going, but I just had to get it out. (If you guys have ideas, pleeeasums tell me, 'cause I'm broke over here.) On a final note, if this seems melodramatic or offensive, I apologize. ALSO. IT ENDS HAPPILY, I SWEAR 8D! -shot'd- I mean, a bucketload of angst this close to the holidays? Feeling pretty guilty, guys.**

**OH AND ON THAT THOUGHT: HAVE A STUPENDOUS AND ABSOLUTELY SPIFFING HAPPY HOLIDAYYYYS! Man, I love this time of the year. I LOVE YOU.**

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Her legs peek out from the edge of the woolen comforter. She curls them back in with her eyes shut and brings the comforter over her head, turning around with stiff, shivering movements before going back to sleep. It is Saturday morning—or noon— and she just knows the icicles dripping from outside the windows are still there.

She does not know about the letter sitting in the winter sun out on the steps, set neatly in black type and a red seal.

Aoko wakes up around two in the afternoon. She ignores the flashing dot on her answering machine and fixes herself some oatmeal with seaweed and shrimp before pushing open the door, shoving another spoonful in her mouth after stretching in the light. A string of bicyclers speed past. It is a good day, she thinks, before stepping on the letter. She picks it up. Opens it. Reads it. Goes back inside.

Aoko sets her breakfast very carefully on the kitchen table and heads to bed.

---

_POLICE CHIEF FOUND DEAD AT KID HEIST IN JAPAN_

_Ginzo Nakamori, member of the Japanese National Police Department and chief of the International Phantom Thief KID Task Force, was found dead at the scene of Monday's KID heist in Tokyo, Japan. The body had fallen twenty stories from the Pearl Tower, the sole casualty during the event. As of currently no other information about the death has been released, with Saguru Hakuba, secondary chief of the task force, unavailable for comment._

_The much-touted heist was one in a string of recent heists, all situated in various museums throughout Japan. Ginzo Nakamori had a history of…_

The switch in his name is okay. This is an American newspaper in an American city in an American country. She wants to leave it.

She books plane tickets eight times and cancels them after every time. Aoko drives to JFK International Airport in the morning, in the afternoon, at night. Looks at it while breathing mist in her car. Drives away.

She isn't scared. The button on the answering machine still flashes.

---

_Dear Miss Aoko Nakamori:_

_We regret to inform you that your father, Ginzo Nakamori, passed away on December 7, 2009 while on duty under the Japanese National Police Department. We offer our sincere condolences and wish you and your family relief during this difficult time._

_The Whitman Brothers Association is a branch under the Tsuyama Banking Corporation and handles all portmortem financial proceedings overseas from its headquarters in Japan. As Mr. Nakamori entrusted us with the handling of his will and possessions, we would like to invite you to a will reading on January 10, 2009 at 10:00 AM in our office situated in—_

She crumples the paper for the hundredth time since that morning. Aoko has not replied to it yet. They have no idea, she thinks. They send you tree pulp, cold and pale, and act like they care and that this was nothing, nothing at all—just like taking a piss in the bathroom down the hall or something absolutely retarded like that. She wasn't retarded.

It isn't their fault, Aoko reminds herself. Well. Fuck that.

---

Her face is sallow when the little antique shop where she works (worked?) calls her. The old man says 'hello, are you okay?' and she goes 'hello, I am fine, I am sorry, I am a little sick' and the old man doesn't say anything but hands the phone over to his wife—she can hear the voices and clicking over the static of the phone—who replies 'you are still working here, you know' and Aoko goes 'thank you' and the old woman replies again 'but you can take a break for however long you want' and she says 'thank you' and they both say 'happy holidays' and Aoko breathes a little when she hangs up the phone.

The moment she leaves, she thinks. The moment she leaves something happens. Aoko has only been in New York City since November, and only graduated college since June. It was going to be a year of nothing but freedom—November to November.

Well. There you go. She had nothing.

(_POLICE CHIEF FOUND DEAD AT KID HEIST IN TOKYO, JAPAN_)

It takes another week before Kaito finally calls.

"Aoko?"

She stares at the phone like it's a foreign animal.

"Aoko, I'm sorry."

What the hell.

"I've been trying to reach you. I swear."

Silence.

"God, Aoko, say something."

The hand holding the phone is white.

"I—Aoko?"

"I'm listening," she said.

"Oh god, Aoko," he breathes, and she thinks that he should stop saying her name over and over again, because it doesn't sound like anything coming from him anymore. "Aoko-- I'm sorry." His voice breaks.

It sounds sort of far away. Like he's underwater. Or she is.

"I-- yeah, god. I know the last person you probably want to talk to is me, but I was hoping that maybe-- I don't know. I don't know-- look, it all happened so fast, I don't even-- god, _Aoko_."

She imagines his eyes wide and hair flying, desperate.

"I know you aren't talking to anyone. And that you hate me and never want to see me again-- but I want to see you, I mean-- I don't know what's wrong with me."

Swallowing.

"Aoko, don't be like this, I mean, it doesn't matter what I want at all but say something, please--"

He keeps talking and talking and talking and she stands there, waiting and waiting until it all stops, suddenly. There is a final 'I'm sorry' before a bloated silence, and it is so unexpected that she looks at the phone, blinking.

She hears something on the other end. They sound a bit like sobs, but Aoko isn't sure.

She hangs up.

Since when did everything start getting so cold?

---

"He's…this is hard for him too," Saguru says tentatively. She holds the phone and looks at the shadows across the bed. "I'm not taking sides—everything is about you right now, Aoko. You—everyone's so worried."

He sounds like he's about to say something else, but doesn't.

"I know."

"The funeral still has to go on," he says quietly.

"I know."

"And…you need to be there."

"I know." A pause. "I will be."

"Are you sure?" It isn't an accusing question. In fact, it's one of the most gentle she's ever heard.

"Yeah. I'll be there."

She isn't sure why she finally picked up the phone in the first place if she knew this was the sort of conversation to happen.

---

Kaito picks her up at the airport. When she spots him looking for her, Aoko watches him for long time before approaching him. She misses the tree lights in the avenues. Japan is covered in slush and bruises, and her father, around this time, would be buying her ice cream.

"Oh," says Kaito. His eyes are sunken and bloodshot. They do not touch each other on the way to the car.


	2. Chapter 2

**Guys. I haven't left. I've just been extremely busy. /shot to infinity But believe me when I say I LOVE you all. WAIT WHO SAID THAT? Pfffft.**

**Also, I am COMPLETELY blown by how many alerts and favorites I've gotten for my fics during my absence. Daayum, I don't deserve any of it. Thanks for sticking with me, everyone ;3; And if I didn't reply to any reviews, I'M REALLY SORRY AHHHHH. I think I lost track. /fail**

**…Btw. HETALIAAAAA /hanged for treason**

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_There are people who are so caught up in life that death is never an option. Nakamori Ginzo held in his liver a deep, broiling anger that kindled his blood and lit him alive. The anger led him up thirty flights of stairs, out into a white-flushed night, up towards a ghost of a friend, and then tossed him down to his death._

_There are people who are so caught up in life they forget that it is not forever. Perhaps the reason people can live so long is because they are buoyed by an urgent, rushing feeling grounded with a sense of caution. This did not make sense to Aoko's father. He—_

"This is the most disgusting funeral speech I have ever read," said Saguru. "We are celebrating his life. I am utterly relieved this is also a dream, because Kuroba should never degrade himself to this level."

Aoko wakes silently. It is blue in Japan and black in New York City, and she hangs in limbo. Her hair clings to the pillow in sweat.

She rises and takes a shower, shivering in the dark.

* * *

The funeral begins with a limp. No one really knows what they're doing. Incense, curling through the temple, slows them.

Everywhere there are hands, hands touching her shoulders, on her hair, steering her back, holding her hand, leading her arms—where the hell are they all coming from, she is walking through a forest of hands that carry her through, and all Aoko wants to do is go Goddamnit, I am not a fucking invalid, and shut up I curse because I want to, _not because my father did_—

She stays silent, though. Aoko has never loved the people around as much as she does now.

Her father looks like he's sleeping. This is a cliché, and Aoko is disappointed to find that it's true. But his brows are furrowed and his lips are frowning, and she entertains the thought that if he is sleeping, perhaps he is dreaming, and if he is dreaming, perhaps in his dream he is on the toilet very constipated, considering the look on his face.

Aoko holds in her laughter, and cries some necessary tears.

_(If he is sleeping, then he is waking.)_

"I wish we were elephants," says Kaito.

This is his speech's opening.

Aoko is about to rise when she thinks back to her dream, and takes a hurried glance at Saguru. He looks murderous, and Keiko's family, the Task Force, the owners of the bar by the police station, and all the other faces (_and hands, hands_) look extremely jarred, as if shaken from sleep.

She stands, but not before Saguru does.

"Because then our memories will be forever," Kaito continues, and maybe with a hint of hurriedness, because he knows the deep water he is in right now. Kaito is the outsider. Aoko finds herself not really caring.

"If each and every one of us remembered him for the rest of our lives, it still wouldn't be enough. And it still wouldn't, even if the rest of Japan gets to remember him too—because our lives, they're short, and our memories sort of die with us. And if we were elephants, the memory would stay forever—every single person in Japan would keep him in their elephant mind, and their kids would too, and everyone else in the world, and the memory would float in the air and drift across oceans and reach everyone, and it wouldn't even matter how many newspapers had his name in it, because people don't remember papers much either. But an elephant's memory is the longest in the world.

I—I think it makes sense for the bravest man in the world."

He's never been so awkward before. Aoko follows him with his eyes as he bows spastically and takes his seat two rows away from her, shrinking into himself. She feels like she's stopped breathing. She sat down some time ago, between 'if' and 'the rest of Japan'.

God, that was the weirdest funeral speech ever. But it was so—it was so—it was—

Saguru's features are soft. He turns to Kaito and says something; she can't hear it. Aoko looks at her father and pretends that he is still drinking his last moment water, spilling it onto his dark suit, and after the funeral, she goes to kiss him. Something inside of her breaks and mends again.

Outside the temple, it may have been snowing. But it may have not.

* * *

_January 10, 2010_

He left everything to her.

_I—I think it makes sense for the bravest man in the world_

_

* * *

_

Things do not stay quiet. She draws her sweater closer around her and opens the door in her New York apartment before promptly slamming it, eyes wide.

Kaito waits several seconds before knocking again.

Aoko waits several seconds before opening the door again.

His cheeks are sucked in and red, and he squints against the wind and at her, hair blown sideways. A green scarf flaps at the gray air. For a strange reason Aoko thinks of a paper boy, although Kaito's hands are clutching nothing but wool. It must be the thinness, she thinks. The bracing, braving thinness, huddled on a doorstep in the middle of the winter.

Aoko wants to say 'What are you doing here' or 'How did you find me' or 'Get out of my sight' or 'Nice weather, isn't it' or 'What's with you and elephants', but what comes out of her mouth is this:

"Come on in." She's let in enough cold already.

"Thanks," he breathes. "Um. D'you have any food?"

Aoko shuts the door and raises her other hand to slap him. He flinches. The hand tucks a piece of her hair behind her ear.

She feels like they could stand there forever in the hallway, hunching shoulders and warming from the cold.

Instead she goes into the kitchen and makes oatmeal with seaweed and shrimp. Kaito looks up from the sofa when she steps out with two steaming bowls.

"I'm sorry," he says with a wind still twisting his tongue.

Aoko hands him a bowl and lays her head on his shoulder. The hands cupping his bowl are shaking, and she doesn't guess why. "I know. So am I."

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**In Japan, when a person dies, a Buddhist priest moistens their lips with "last moment water", or 末期の水 (_Matsugo-no-mizu_). In the coffin, the men wear suits and the women wear kimonos. Also, I are lazy and left out a ton of other Japanese funeral rituals…go check them out though, they're all sorts of beautiful. C:**

**Man, the funeral was so hard to write. ;A; First ever funeral scene and aghh, I'm really sorry if I overstepped a boundary or got too melodramatic. Feel free to bash my head with a humongous vegetable.**

**There's one more chapter to wrap things up, I think. I have a feeling I'm rushing this...**


End file.
